Page 55 of Monk

I met his gaze with all the ice I could summon. “We have nothing to discuss,” I said. Cold. Flat. Precise. “You’ve made yourself very clear. You told me exactly what you think of me, and I was paying attention. So no, John, we do not need to talk.” I shifted my briefcase higher in my grip. “And if you have even a shred of sense left, you’ll let me walk away before either one of us says something we can’t take back.”

His hand shot out and closed around my arm, his grip firm and unyielding. Heat burned through the sleeve of my blazer, instant and electric, and hatred flared right alongside the ache. I jerked against him, not hard enough to get free, just enough to let him know I felt every second of it. “Let my arm go,” I said quietly, the anger in me so sharp it made my voice softer instead of louder.

“You are not going anywhere until I get answers,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.

I yanked against his hold, fury flashing through me so hard it almost made me dizzy. The pressure of his hand on my arm felt like a violation all by itself—too familiar, too possessive, too much like he thought he still had any right to touch me. “Let. Me. Go!”

“No.”

Before I could get another breath around the rage building in my chest, he bent, wrapped an arm around my waist, and hauled me up and over his shoulder like I weighed nothing. The world tipped sideways in one violent, humiliating rush. My stomach dropped. My briefcase slipped from my hand and hit the gravel with a dull crack, forgotten the second panic and humiliation came roaring to life under my skin.

“JOHN!” I screamed, pounding my fists against his back. “PUT ME DOWN!”

He didn’t respond. Didn’t slow. Didn’t even tense, like my struggle was nothing to him. He just stormed back toward the clubhouse with me slung over his shoulder, his grip locked hard against my legs, fury radiating off him in suffocating waves.

I kicked. I screamed. I beat against him with everything I had, rage and helplessness turning each strike sharper than the last. “You son of a bitch! Let me go! I swear to God, I will press charges!”

He kicked open the clubhouse door and strode through the gathering room, past the stunned brothers still standing near the bar, past Kansas, whose mouth opened like he meant to stop this before whatever he saw on John’s face made him think better of it. Every set of eyes in that room landed on me—on my writhing body, my fury, my humiliation—and something hot and poisonous crawled up my throat.

Then we were in the hallway. His hallway. His room. The door slammed open. A second later, he threw me onto his bed hard enough to knock the breath clean out of me. I bounced once, stunned, then scrambled upright on instinct, hair falling into my face, chest heaving, every nerve lit with rage. “How dare you!” I shouted, glaring up at him through the tangle of dark hair. “How fucking dare you!”

He didn’t step back. Didn’t give me space. Didn’t offer me even the smallest scrap of decency. He moved in again, crowding me with all that heat and force until there was no air left in the space, no room left for anything but him. His face stopped inches from mine, his eyes burning so hard that it stole my next breath.

“My daughter,” he growled.

His words hit me like a physical blow. My whole body locked. I blinked. My throat went bone-dry. I opened my mouth, butnothing came out. Nothing. Just silence. Just the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears so violently it hurt. He stared at me, jaw tight, hands clenched into fists at his sides, like he was barely holding himself together. And when I still didn’t say a word—when I just sat there frozen because God, I had imagined this moment a thousand different ways and none of them looked like this—he grabbed my arms and hauled me to my feet.

“MY DAUGHTER!” he roared, his voice raw and broken and full of a realization that sounded like it was tearing him apart from the inside out.

I gasped, my hands instinctively gripping his forearms as he held me upright, his face so close to mine I could see the gold flecks in his dark eyes, could feel the heat pouring off his body, could see the devastation cracking something open in him. “John.”

“She’s mine,” he said, his voice splitting on the words. Mine.”

Tears burned hot at the back of my eyes.

I wanted to be angry. Wanted to shove him away and tell him he had no right to claim her now after weeks of cruelty, after standing there while Ruby put her hands on me, after accusing me of betrayal and looking at me like I was filth. But the look on his face—God, the look on his face.

It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t triumph.

It was devastation. Pure, unfiltered devastation. The kind that comes when grief and love and lost time all hit at once and leave a man bleeding where no one can see.

“Yes,” I whispered, my voice barely there. “She’s yours.”

His grip on my arms tightened, and for one wild second, I thought he might shake me, demand every missing year back all at once. But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled me closer, his forehead dropping to rest against mine, his breath coming in ragged gaspsthat shuddered against my mouth. “I didn’t know,” he said, his voice breaking. “I didn’t fucking know.”

“I know,” I whispered, because I did.

That was the cruelest part of it. I knew.

“I thought—” He stopped, swallowing hard, his jaw clenching. “I thought you moved on. I thought you?—”

“I know what you thought,” I whispered, and my voice trembled because now that the truth was here between us, all the pain chained behind it was breaking loose too. “And I know what you did. I know how you treated me. I know what you let happen.”

He flinched like I had struck him. “Lina.”

“You let her slap me,” I said, my voice hardening with every word. “You stood there and let that woman put her hands on me. You accused me of betraying you. You looked at me like I was nothing. Like I was beneath you.”

“I know,” he said, raw and immediate. “I know. And I?—”